The Farmers' Almanac is predicting a cold winter, while the National Weather Service is calling for warmer-than-normal temperatures across much of the country.
"The almanac's forecast, however, is at odds with the National Weather Service, which is calling for warmer-than-normal temperatures across much of the country because of an El Nino system in the tropical Pacific Ocean, said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the NOAA Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md."
Numbing cold... the Almanac says... in certain places.
Plumes of extreme rising heat in, say, California's central valley, cause thermal troughs that pull extremely cold air in at the periphery of the hot column of rising air, leaving San Francisco relatively well-air conditioned and foggy in the cold air sucked in from the Pacific Ocean... while the central valley is broiling.
Standard models of convection explain the so-called conflict between the Farmer's Almanac and the NOAA.
Where there is unusual cold, there is likely to be unusual heat, somewhere, pulling the cold air in. For instance, the almanacs' prediction of a dry winter in the southeast probably means heat and drought further south, where a thermal trough caused by rising heat is pulling cold air down from Canada, into the Great Lakes and the Midwest.
For another example, if we are to see hotter temperatures from global warming, we will also see especially colder temperatures on the periphery of hot spots, even as the hot spots grow hotter and wider over the years. Uncharacteristically cold temperatures will be experienced on the periphery of uncharacteristically hot temperatures.
It's standard convection, to be expected, but those stuck in that cold will be scoffing at the lunacy of some kind of climate change conspiracy. All they know is that THEY are cold, while droughts elsewhere drive the price of food skyward. The heat is too far away for them to relate it to their current condition, and they will be apoplectic, like a 9/12 birther-brigadier standing before his death panel, but it's the god Physics... equal and opposite reaction and all of that... not a conspiracy theory.
"I'm getting a little ticked off that it feels like the knees are buckling a little bit," Ferraro said. "We have overwhelming majorities in both the House and the Senate. And we own the whole shooting match. And I'm just getting...
"It's very frustrating to watch you try and compromise with these people who aren't willing to compromise with you."
..but first, Charlie Rose talks to Arianna and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, along with Ross Douthat (a right-wing extremist from inside the belt-way). Okay, no, he's not an extremist, but he probably voted for Palin.
Anyway... they cogently discuss Obama's legacy, only 8 months in to his presidency, and Douthat aptly states that a tepid healthcare bill without a public option will be judged largely on how people feel about the economy come Nov. 2010.
Arianna is more pessimistic, fairly believing that the public option is all there is, that the larger part of Obama's support will collapse in its absence, while Doris Kearns Goodwin just hopes that everybody will get along... and that Obama will put Lincoln away for a while and do his FDR imitation.
...and she has a point. Lincoln did a lot of conciliatory maneuvers to preserve the union, but the Southern racist extremists were never willing to compromise in the first place.
Meanwhile, the president takes this very question from a caller with a common touch, one self-described Joe the Nerd, on a right wing conservative call-in radio show.
Like a true nerd earning his network administrator cred, Joe Ferraro, a 48-year-old father of three, one running his own business, fixing computers, left himself on speakerphone while talking to Obama, all but crashing his chance of a lifetime by wearing that 21st century version a pocket protector in public... the speakerphone.
...but the message was heard from a moderate wondering why Obama's "knees are buckling," and the term became the meme for the rest of the week. So did Obama's wordy answer, which didn't answer the question directly as much as it put the question in relevant context.
Joe's moderate voice is right, and so are Arianna and Doris... (even Rodd Douthat in his observations, if not his apparent hopes and dreams for a lame duck presidency come November 2010).
Obama just needs to do what needs to be done and let the inevitable chips fall where they may. It's time to put the teachable moment aside, now that we've seen what anybody has to put on the table, and act on the best ideas... which happens to be John Edwards idea, the public option in a regulated exchange with qualified public policies.
However, I would emphasize that No One, not even the private insurance plans need participate in the exchange at all if they don't want to.
If all there is in the health insurance exchange are the public option, Medicare, the VA, Medicaid, and the federal employee plans... so be it. Let the private industry compete out in the Wild West where they've done so well... and call it a compromise. In fact, say, "they win." They're unregulated, and let the buyer decide.
Identity Theft: the independent South is not who they think they are.
(HuffPo)
"According to Gallup, of the 25 states with the greatest percentage of the uninsured, all but three are based in the South or the Midwest.
"These same regions also have the largest percentage of populations who believe widely perpetuated mistruths about the Obama agenda, including allegations that the president will set up 'death panels' and wants a complete government takeover of the health care system."
Texans are such doormats, trapped in their neo-plantation paradigm, pretending they're Wild West independents when they're really just dumb, southern dupes with the lowest wages and no healthcare, working their uneducated fingers to the bone for make-believe cowboys, who play them like a willing, sycophantic fiddle.
Listen to them brag about their unemployment rate, when they're literally enslaved by low wages and Faux Noose ideology, by their snuff-snorting elite masters, the wealthy conflict-mongers heavily invested in the perpetual Cold War mentality that makes everyone your enemy.
Instead of paying their workforce enough for adequate preventative healthcare and continuing education, these executive urban cowboys wearing boots made in China leave it to the emergency rooms, where the rest us pick up the bill for corporate disinterest in the well-being of its low-wage employees.
No, you won't EVER see this in print, because the truth is too insulting to Southern PC sensitivities, but these gullible sweatshop minions are too caught up in identity mythology to actually DO something in the best interest of their children and grandparents... so invested are they in their dictated and completely made up identity.
It's a national embarrassment. The entire, modern, developed world is laughing at the gullibility and cringing at the duplicity, while Texas revels in an absurdly false identity that NOBODY is buying.
Elsewhere, we have the most progressive, educated, wealthy, literate, and, yes, the most elite regions of the country, the Northeast and Northwest, fighting to bring affordable healthcare to the used and abused... especially to Texas... but the South has got to learn first. The poverty and long lines in the hallway outside the emergency room are the truth, NOT grandma's death panel promoted on Faux Noose.
Rachel Maddow ties Dick Armey to the 9/12 birther brigadiers and challenges Coburn (R-Oklahoma) when she pretty much co-hosts Meet the Press.
Two minutes in, Coburn says that America has earned the disruptive, threatening discord that David Gregory has ably tied to the Oklahoma City bombing. The debate, Coburn said, when asked about the tone, "is NOT about healthcare. It's about an uncontrolled federal government."
To tell the truth, Coburn was referring to government earning the ire, not America, but the public is suffering the pre-fab protests just the same. The public is getting hit in the drive-by shootings the pantaloon goons are pulling, their time now wasted, abused by people disinterested in debate.
There's little point in quoting, because so much is said in the stammering tone of voice, but Maddow begins to dismantle the men at 4 minutes, 30 seconds, and shows David Gregory how it's done. At 7 minutes, she uses one of Dick Armey's legs to pick the rest of him out of her teeth.
But Maddow did fail to properly refute Dick Armey's claim that Moveon.org aired ads comparing Bush to Hitler.
MoveOn didn’t create the ads. They were submitted by contestants in a contest sponsored by MoveOn. If the debate's about who organizes and provides the venue or forum, it's fair to ask, what the difference is between the Moveon incident and the 9/12-birther conspiracy theorist's cookie-cutter threats fomented by FOX Noose and other Dick Army associates.
Obviously, we can compare the body count. A MILLION dead bodies in Iraq, many more wounded, 3 million uprooted, untold numbers mentally ruined by post-traumatic shock... the question of who's a bigger fascist is won by the guy with the most bodies around his belt.
We see the same RNC, GOP, the pantaloon goons marching in lock-step, mouthing Steve Doocy's morning propaganda release, the same way the Republican congressional staffers and Bush campaign leaders manned the ranks of that other so-called spontaneous public unrest: the Brooks Brother's rebellion that disrupted the 2002 recount in Florida.
Meanwhile, Dick Armey's obvious efforts to mask corporate lobbying as popular uprising are well-documented case studies in Astroturf installation.
Living further-up to her Edward R. Morrow award for journalism, Ms. Couric applies critical thinking to reportage on the town hall bootjacks hoping to turn every policy debate into a referendum on their philosophically unrelated pet peeves.
"At a town meeting hosted by Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania resident stood up to say that the health care debate has "awakened the sleeping giant." Not exactly.
What's it's done, it seems, is stirred a hornets nest, and uncovered disturbing attitudes and emotions that have nothing to do with policy."
Some people wonder what's become of Katie Couric, ever since she effectively stopped any chance of Sarah Palin ever running for public office outside of Southeastern Kansas... or as long as those election 2008 interviews are archived on YouTube.
Navy seals rock better in some ways than in others. For example, they make GREAT charity calendars when the pentagon has to do fundraising and bake sales to fund the new paramilitary troops being institutionalized among the ranks of that teaming hotbed of savage social radicalism, ACORN.
"Depending on where you stand, the war can be seen as the sinister culmination of a systematic provocation by a neo-imperialist Russia or as a murderously aggressive gambit by a Caucasian strongman wrongheadedly backed by the West."
Soooo, um... why can't we see it as the sinister, systematic, provocation by a neo-imperialist Russia of a murderously aggressive strongman wrongheadedly backed by the West?
Some of us hope we CAN have it all, after all, but seriously, the side-taking in a conflict hardly anyone in the West even knew existed until it erupted in light gunfire was specious Cold War nostalgia, and little more.
At best, these are all bad actors sitting on a narrow trade route from which very few of the real, native inhabitants derive much benefit from the real resources over which the world is arguing.
The legal and political LGBT coalition that lost the Prop 8 battle doesn't take a tucker to the new same-sex marriage upstarts who see no use for them.
Straights Acting: Ali Shams and Kaelan Housewright hope to remove "marriage" from the definition of marriage altogether.
(EdgeSF)
"The groups also argue that their extensive experience and expertise in litigating the very factual issues before the court would make them of great assistance to the parties and the court"
Gay Inc. doesn't realize that THEY lost their case in the first place. We saw these people argue Prop 8 in front of the California Supreme Court, and they sounded like junior varsity debate team alternates, always on the defense rather than acting like actual plaintiffs in the case.
Barging in on new cases working their way to the US Supreme Court, these groups feel slighted by the cool, legalese reception the receive.
Meanwhile, it's argued in the LGBTQC community, or at least by me, that the previous battles were EQCA and Lambda Legal Defense's to lose, and that they lost by being insular, turf-warring not-so-non-profits acting like corporations that are more interested in protecting their market share.
This is the inner-gay scene battle we're seeing now. If Gay Inc. is made any more irrelevant by this court case and by the cute young Turks jumpstarting the marriage movement from the grassroots, these failed establishment groups stand to lose control of millions of dollars and people, fundraising turf that they've monopolized for years.
"The website describes the trend in America - and particularly in Congress - to use the criminal law to 'solve' every problem, punish every mistake (instead of making proper use of civil penalties), and coerce Americans into conforming their behavior to satisfy social engineering objectives."
What a weird twist on this theme. We're more used to seeing liberal First Amendment groups fighting some safe-web-surfing law that the Heritage Foundation would want to use to comb indiscriminately through public library lending records, looking to see who rented a video with previews from Equus.
I wonder why this change of heart for HF? It's unlike them to protest a bill that seems to require a life sentence, up from 15 years, for the possession of child pornography.
Child pornography is both creepy and dangerous but also subjective and easily able to be planted. Life sentences would need to be provided in the most extreme and conclusive cases.
But does this bill use a fine toothed comb, or can it haul hair-trigger victims of any kind of witch hunt off to jail and ruin their lives just because they clicked on the wrong link forwarded to them from some quadruple X porn freak?
Will we see Reaganesque penalties such as there were entire properties confiscated by state and municipal governments just because a pot seed was found there? Is the ACLU and Heritage Foundation in rare agreement over this one, or are they just fighting some arcane one-upmanship battle for a House seat or something?
It IS really fun to go, "See! those guys at the Heritage Foundation really ARE hypocritical child molesters!" But we also need an article delving into what's really going on, because that's probably pretty interesting, too.
Governor Howard Dean, former head of the DNC, promises contested congressional Democratic primaries if the healthcare bill "doesn't pass with a public option" as the result of so much centrist Democratic back-peddling on healthcare reform.
Lou Dobbs is frightfully shaken by talk like this.
"I thought we had gotten rid of this left-wing pest for a while," Dobbs said. "But I guess he is just resurgent. He is a blood-sucking leftist. You have got to put a stake through his heart to stop this guy."
Pointing to GOP Senator Grassley and Sarah Palin's ominously evocative talk of DNC death panels and also to RNC chairman Michael Steele and Republican Senator DeMint's challenge to mold healthcare reform's failure into Obama's eventual Waterloo, Dean emphasizes the GOP's total disinterest in any plan at all... much less any thoughtful or honest debate
The only actual debate is going on between the administration and the so-called centrist Democrats, many of them newly elected to Congress.
More scary than Lou is that his kind of craziness is predictable, now that it has become all too common among once serious contibutors... now that even our most absurd jokes turn out to be political prophesy.
But commie vampires are not all that's biting. From MoveOn.org, there's "Shark Week"
Meanwhile, at the healthcare town hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Obama tried to deal with the persistent and arguable claim that his ultimate objective is a single-payer health care system by telling the audience, "For us to transition to a system like that I think would be too disruptive."
IF people are smart, a government-run insurance plan would eventually, in effect, create a so-called single-payer system.
But... the word, single-payer, has been a disastrous misnomer for reform-minded public relations, one that mischaracterizes what's being done in countries where it's in place.
The word no longer benefits from being associated with those Xerox flyers taped to telephone poles throughout the '90s, creating the impression of a system that is actually run from the monthly gathering of indigenous cooperative granola rollers who meet to decide who will live and who must report to this panel the following month to die.
Some single-payer systems are simply a large non-profit corporation, funded by a combination of taxes and premiums, much like Medicare is funded here, a fund that pays private service providers like doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, hospice, drug and equipment companies. And most so-called single-payer systems aren't even the only payer in town, because plenty of private insurance options exist in these so-called single-payer countries.
Progressive reform enthusiasts variously don't know this or have stupidly gotten lost in the lingo of pseudo-socialism that serves them no good in persuasive debate. It's remarkably embarrassing on top of being confoundingly self-defeating.
A better term to use would be federal-payer, and the insurance plan's optional use should be emphasized, because the progressive's teachable moment, the ideological hard-sell via hard-core indoctrination determined to persuade everyone about the socialist efficiencies and equality of the single-payer system is exactly what scares people. The first thing that natural proponents of single-payer need to face is the fact that the system isn't even what they think it is, and then devise one that's appealing to American sensibilities, instead of thinking it's only a matter of mass, systematic re-education before people see the light.
Branding is everything, and the customized and modern single-payer systems working so well in other countries haven't been properly evaluated or explained to American healthcare reformers, much less the American people. SiCKO has been the only effective teaching tool, but its purpose served only to show that people are happy with their system, not the interesting differences between systems around the world.
"By comparison, President Obama’s presidential campaign spent about $236 million on television commercials while the campaign of the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona, spent about $126 million."
AMERICA, this day in history: Along with the AMA and the nurses association, plus PhARMA and 60% of the American people, Obama's got the hospitals and insurance companies backed up in the corner... with birth certificate conspiracy goons and goose-booting pantaloon troops from the 9/12 BOO! movement... all of them arguing the finer points of apocalyptic birther theory.
Through two tediously eerie years, tenaciously trying all that any kook can cough up, Glenn Beck's Clamity Players have nothing but this laughably forged birth certificate from a country that didn't even exist at the time of Obama's birth. That's pretty much the basis of their plan to reform healthcare, but how do they keep a DOA like that alive?
Hearing of euthanasia and rumor of euthanasia, an ugly mob with pitchforks are goaded by the Faux Noose-Limbaugh-Drudge echo network, into mimicking verbaim mockery that Steve Doocy introduces to his morning listener to-do lists each day.
Meanwhile, there's the 9/12ers emailing prophetic doomsday theory to our mothers regarding the imminent outbreak of civil war, apocalyptic birther rumor, imploring that we stock up on ammo, medicine, and begin a plan to ration food and generally weather in for the Rapture. That's the plan.
Meanwhile, on the left, things are just as circumspect, although from there the fascists could be just about anybody... not only the fascists.
Robert Reich asks that "Democrats and progressives should ask themselves how they'll feel when a Republican White House cuts such deals to advance its own legislative priorities."
"I'm a strong supporter of universal health insurance, and a fan of the Obama administration. But I'm appalled by the deal the White House has made with the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying arm to buy their support."
Although I generally agree with Bobby, he's a little bit scattered in his message, saying at first that it's 1994 all over again but then pointing out that it's not. If, in the first case, it were the other way around, if Obama promised to give the pharmaceutical industry $80 billion in exchange for its effort to stop reform, THAT would be business as usual.
Last time, the prescription bill GAVE $1.2 trillion to the industry... instead of taking $80 billion from them... but Reich is right; it's undemocratic if the details are not publically available, "when an industry gets secret concessions out of the White House in return for a promise to lend the industry's support to a key piece of legislation.
But... because he had that "front-row seat in 1994 when Big Pharma and the rest of the health-industry complex went to battle against reform," Reich can tell us firsthand "how big and effective the onslaught can be". He says, "I appreciate Big Pharma's support this time around, and I like it that the industry is doing the reverse of what it did last time, and airing ads to persuade the public of the rightness of the White House's effort."
Reich doesn't want to be puritanical about it, because the White House deal with Big PhARMA may be "a necessary step to get anything resembling universal health insurance," but if that's the case, he says, "our democracy is in terrible shape.
He may be more optimistic than I am, maybe even more naïve, to think we're not already that far gone. I believe we are, and the reception reform has had in the Senate is indicative of it, especially after they had total political cover after the election to pass reform along the lines of what was debated during the 2008 election.
As much as this deal has been laid at Obama's feet, that's not the way the story was told. The agreement was reached, first, with the Senate.
Democratic principles aside, such as they are for the moment, if their deal is that the administration, in exchange for industry support for reform, will not push Congress for a bigger discount than $80 billion from PhARMA... I'm not all that outraged. The industry's support is virtually priceless. If the LA Times version of the story, that PhARMA received "a White House pledge to forswear Medicare drug price bargaining," what does it mean to forswear?
If in exchange for industry support the administration promised to lobby against a bigger discount than $80 billion from PhARMA, then I'm more specifically bothered.
If in exchange for industry support the administration promised to VETO any legislation that is more tough than $80 billion on PhARMA, then I'm inconsolably bothered... that is UNLESS my bottom-of-the-barrel requirement is met, a federal-payer health care plan on par with federal employee benefits... one that is blind to pre-existing conditions.
I don't even really care what the private industry does if there is my option. If legislation also closes the prescription donut hole, in addition to providing my blind federal-payer plan, I might get over feeling sold out.
If Big Pharm is bankrolling the pro Obama care plan, why should WE then give money or support to it too?
For some reason, the proprietor class is steadfast in the belief that people should pay for things, and we see it even in shady shenanigans like these, where they fake this largess while passing the cost of it onto us. Thus, someone else is always going to absorb this cost, either through taxes, fees, premiums, penalties, or while paying for products at the point of sale.
And we keep arguing about these things, every time someone moves a shell, from tax, to fee, to premiums, then to penalties, and now at the cash register, again and again, to dispel the latest constituents outraged that they should pay for healthcare reform. The buck only stops at the consumer, who again screams for real reform.
The end user is targeted, always, as the long-tail, deep pocket, whether we miss the shady details of a deal like this or openly gloat over record jury awards for the pain and suffering cause by industry malpractice. The cost is ALWAYS passed down. Where else would the money come from, except the investors, who, arguably, could solve all our problems by investing in social conscience?
"Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has compared the scenes at health care town halls to the 'Brooks Brothers riot' in 2000 — the demonstration that disrupted the vote count in Miami and arguably helped send George W. Bush to the White House.
"Portrayed at the time as local protesters, many of the rioters were actually G.O.P. staffers flown in from Washington."
The GOP of the 1980s had their goose-stepping obsession with the 1950s, not realizing that particular history ended in a terrible recession that drove the Republicans out of power and the country running into Kennedy's arms.
Today's Neandercons are just as obsessed with the 1980s, and they seem to be also very unaware that three deregulated Reaganomic recessions drove the party right back out of power.
Sometime around 2020... after America has forgotten these absurdities... the reconstituted Republican Party will look back at the 2000s as the last greatest apex of GOP hegemony, their hey day, never remembering it's exactly what drove the whole world to near depression... and completely totaled America's moral standing around the globe.
There's no stopping the fact that enough of us are going to forget it.
We've seen it all before, and we'll see it all again, only bigger and much more dangerous next time... because Americans will forget about these Faux Noose brown shirts and their bootjack hooliganism.
Ultimately, many of us are to blame, even as we avoid Faux Noose, because we consume plenty of other Murdoch products that keep his rope swinging, shows like the Simpsons... Lie to Me Arrested Development King of the Hill Doll house Fringe House Life on Mars That '70s Show Fire Fly Bones MADtv Futurama Buffy Rescue Me It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Prison Break X-Files Glee Family Guy The Wrestler Secret Life of Bees Slumdog Millionaire X-Men Fast Food Nation Ice Age Borat Notes on a Scandal Once Marley and Me Juno The Savages Waitress Bride Wars Little Miss Sunshine The Darjeeling Limited 28 Days Later The Last King of Scotland Garden State Night at the Museum (500) Days of Summer Thank You For Smoking Millions Sideways Kinsey Waking Life Boys Don't Cry
"At least five states required men to register as sex offenders if they were caught visiting prostitutes. At least 13 required it for urinating in public. No fewer than 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. And 32 states registered streakers."
Out of 17,000 registered sex offenders in Georgia, a very small number, just over 100, are classified as "predators", which means they have a compulsion to commit sex offences.
Only five percent, 850, were clearly dangerous, while 35% were potentially threatening and 65% pose little threat at all.
Thoughtful, serious people see the obvious problem. These lists are only useful to people who require even the least offensive people to be judged beneath them.
When making out at lovers lane with your high school sweetheart, peeing urgently in public, or skinny-dipping on a dare is a felonious crime, the list of offenders becomes a jumble of gross misinformation only the panicked and self-righteous abide.
Because "every lawmaker who wants to sound tough on sex offenders has to propose a law tougher than the one enacted by the last politician who wanted to sound tough," we're locking up and marking for life people who went streaking, those who couldn't wait to pee at home. Teenagers are criminally tainted for life... socially ostracized after having had sex with each other.
The Rapture-ready, sex-panic police are one thing, but it takes more than just them to incite the fear in our lawmakers, who resort to legislative over-kill that ruins the lives of someone as innocent as your childhood sweetheart or as harmless as a frat-house buddy peeing on the side of a tree.
"I find this ad a little risky.... is it wise to accuse Republicans of being mobs in the streets? Are they? Or is it more the annoying talk show people."
I agree; it's a risky shot... in the context of standard DNC consultancy, a sensibility which normally hopes more than anything to NOT offend the opposition's constituency.
It's a very current media event in which small hoards of particularly white and peculiarly old people are showing up at a few town hall meetings and shouting down discussion of anything except Obama's birth certificate or dooms-day conspiracy scenarios of mass-euthanasia of senior citizens.
This mob-like belligerence is a direct export of the violence-laced invective we saw at McCain-Palin campaign rallies last fall.
The mob mentality is fomented by Faux Noose demagoguery, the inflammatory and paranoid social commentary that you mentioned, and it's facilitated by the medical industrial complex and public relations consultants who are aptly whipping the media into a wild frenzy of sensationalistic coverage that magnifies a relatively small, goaded fringe of anti-reform-naysayers into this preposterously outsized pseudo-movement.
Meanwhile, through manipulation of poll reporting, a mischaracterization abided by the press (because the perception of cultural conflict sells advertising revenue) people believe that there is rampant disapproval of creatively radical reform, even though internal Republican polling clearly shows that most people support both a strong public option AND a competitive federal payer, both available in a national package sold in a mixed public-commercial market.
Instead of depending on a naively well-meaning constituency to write this bogus demonstration off as total nonsense that no one we know would really buy into, this DNC ad is fighting back at a guerilla media manipulation campaign by characterizing it as lunacy, right when the freak show launches. The reformers can't afford to sleep through August.
The DNC wastes no time, because congressmen use this whipped-up, faux controversy as their excuse to side with the corporate interests who have already bought them off. It's ALL about having that plausible excuse, this imaginary political cover... nothing to do with truth... and the DNC aims to neutralize that preposterous claim. It's ad hominem, but the right-wing invites it by being so freaky.
Back to the pitchfork weilding mob... I see your point, that it seems like an over-the-top tactical reaction to call these people lunatics, but I think the DNC has made the strategic judgment that the Republican core has been reduced to its minimal, whacky, Rapture-ready constituency, that reformist forces MUST act with an unorthodox immediacy, before the center-right campaign is able to attract that tragically flimsy-minded sub-set of the white American demographic who unconsciously believes they can afford to side with the wittiest, more entertaining contestant... in a contest that has been won by the RNC, up until recently, when the GOP core totally lost its snarky sense of humor... all because they pathologically loathe the notion of electing a black man as president.
The DNC is dispensing with conventional Democratic wisdom... acting in the moment... and baiting these racist dooms-day conspiracy zealots into reacting with even more nuttiness, with historically fanatical and violence-laced social-conservative whackery, with the anger and palpable meanness that totally failed McCain-Palin in 2008.
Bill Myers reminds us that "Wendell Potter was here a few weeks ago to tell an insider's story of how the health insurance industry 'puts profits before patients.' Your response bowled us over." A blogger at Talking Points Memo summed it up:
"I beg everyone who reads this and clicks onto the link to send it on to everyone you know. Send it to your congressmen, your governors, your legislatures, the White House.
"Whatever it takes. This is a television event too important to let die..."
Like a prophet, Wendell Potter told us how the insurance industry would attack the debate that was set to take place in D.C. this summer. As if on cue, obviously reading from the strategy paper that Potter revealed, the industry struck back at healthcare reform that they have publicly pretended to support.
Here's the original interview.
Potter tells Moyers that he began his transformation to corporate whistleblower after attending a "health care expedition," a makeshift health clinic set up at a fairgrounds
Meanwhile, chronicling a disturbing aspect of industry lobbying, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann is taking names of well-placed congressmen taking multi-million dollar bribes to do the corporate medical industrial complex's bidding, instead of representing the interests of more corporeal constituents.
Thanks to MSNBC and Bill Moyers for fearless name-calling.
Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald sullies the reputation of Newsweek reporter and frequent NBC commentator, Richard Wolffe, pointing out that he's a stratgist in his night job at Public Strategies Inc., putting the man's stylish Euro-vampire charms into darker context.
"Wolffe's role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover.
"This is a conflict so severe that it's incurable by disclosure: who wouldn't realize that you can't present paid corporate hacks as objective political commentators? But the fact that they don't even bother to disclose that just serves to illustrate how non-existent is the line between corporate interests and 'news reporting' in the United States."
I've always liked Wolffe and was glad to see him show up on TV. I would read anything that had his name on it, but lately he has sounded a little slick, less journalistic, more sensationalistic, and it was somewhat troubling to be losing touch with his presumably trust-worthy political insight on the basis of style.
This more serious revelation is disappointing, on the one hand, but it's heartening to see such cannibalistic housecleaning on the (somewhat) progressive political opinion scene. Heaping kudos to Glenn Greenwald and Salon.
For a major tire manufacturer, undergoing the largest tire recall in U.S. history, also facing possible punitive legislation and constricting regulations comes away that happy, their new-found lobbyist has GOT to be good.
The bill is dated July 14, 2009, a long time ago, by congressional standards. The bill that was just passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Friday July 31st isn't the same bill we're looking at here:
That committee made significant changes to the legislation. Then there's the Senate version, too, so this isn't the "new" healthcare bill or the newest, and it's not even the only one.
The very last item on the list, "Should the government be requiring seniors to attend end of life counseling?"has been thoroughly debunked, so has the item referred to below: Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient's health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.
The so-called end-of-life orders mentioned in the legislation aren't issued by the government. They're the usual written orders made by a senior citizen or anyone else while writing up his or her DNR, living-will, or medical power of attorney.
AARP has responded to these healthcare reform scare tactics, calling them rife with gross, cruel distortions".
Page 16: Eliminates the choice to purchase private health insurance!
This is section 102 of Title 1, which defines standards for "qualified plans". What's a qualified plan? Qualified for what? Qualified only under this bill? Qualified only for the exchange? Qualified to exist at all? The only limitation I see is that all individual plans (strictly private plans, as opposed to the public option and the enviable federal-employee-like plan), must be sold through the healthcare exchange. Employer plans and group plans may be offered outside of the exchange.
Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!
This is not an audit and doesn't mention auditing "all employers". It's a study to determine "The risk of self-insured employers not being able to pay obligations or otherwise becoming financially insolvent." It's similar to the problem AIG suffered, writing insurance plans above and beyond its ability to pay out. This sounds like a worthy study, and the email authors effort to call it "a mandated audit of all employers" is disingenuous.
Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!
Section 122, defining essential benefits, minimum services allowable, limitations on cost sharing (co-payments). I don't see any limitations on benefits, only limitations on co-payments on the basic plans as opposed to the enhanced plan and premium plans.
Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process).
Section 123 established the Health Benefits Advisory Committee, chaired by the Surgeon General, members appointed by the president and the Comptroller. They only make recommendations about benefits that may be offered in various plans, but they are not responsible for the adoption of such standards. There is no mention of what the email author refers to as an appeals process, but public input is required in the committee's deliberations. Also, these benefits will be offered through an insurer, so the email author's suggestion that they are not is incorrect.
Page 42: The "Health Choices Commissioner" will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.
So which is it? Is it the above committee who decided how you will die or this commissioner of another committee who decides how you will die?
The email author isn't being honest about who decides how you will die. Did you know that in almost all cases of airplane crashed a pilot was behind the wheel? Why would we take their word about killing people? I'm going to stop here because the email is obviously an exercise in cherry-picking terms that can be disingenuously misinterpreted in the most scary way, much like other fear-mongering emails that have been traced back to the usual suspects purporting to be ordinary people simply concerned about your well-being.
Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.
Okay, I couldn't help it. Just one more. This section says "all health care and related services (including insurance coverage and public health activities) covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services."
Nowhere does it say that all non-US citizens illegal or not will be provided with free healthcare services.
By the way, if as a US citizen you injured yourself in the UK, you'd be treated for free, instead of being rejected by your insurance plan for being in an out of plan emergency room. Would you like that or to die in an ambulance your family wouldn't be able to afford after it spent hours circling the city looking for the best place to dump your body?
Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.
This is addictively fun. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Poor fish... new barrel.
This section says that insurance policies "may include utilization of a machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card," not that everyone will be issued a national ID card.
HOWEVER... a few sections up in Section 2746, the bill specifically trounce the email author's unfounded claim that the committee and/or the commissioner mentioned above will have the final say.
"If a health insurance issuer determines to rescind health insurance coverage for an individual in the individual market, before such rescission may take effect the issuer shall provide the individual with notice of such proposed rescission and an opportunity for a review of such determination by an independent, external third party under procedures... If the individual requests such review by an independent, external third party of a rescission of health insurance coverage, the coverage shall remain in effect until such third party determines that the coverage may be rescinded."
Okay, now I'm going to quit. No really, I can stop any time I want, but that doesn't mean I don't have the choice to do it again anytime I like. It'sa Merica, after all
Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.
Sigh...This establishes as a minimum standard that payment can be made with your debit or credit card through electronic banking. Cash payment is not required, nor should it be, or should it be? I always forget, but I'd hate it if the emergency room wouldn't take anything but cash on demand.
Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans.
This program is actually available to ALL employment-based plans participating in a particular program. Employers participate in this plan (or not!) by making financial contributions to the plan. It DOES seem to be a form of federal health insurance for retirees supported by the participating employer's voluntary contributions.
By the way, there's also... wait for it... an appeals process so employers can... appeal decisions. Here, there IS an actual audit of claims data of participating employer-based plans. Nowhere, though, are "union retirees" or "community organizers" mentioned. The email authors referral to union retirees and community organizers is preposterous. Community organizer health plans? PuLeeeeze! It's SUCH a coded terminology meant to freak Republicans out, because we all know "community organizers" are uppity black people running for president, or worse... ACORN! This is one of the more embarrassing claims.
Seriously, the next time you fly, you should worry whether this so-called pilot is flying your plane, but I suspect that if Captain Scully had never safely landed the plane in the Hudson River we'd be reading this same exact email from a purported fireman instead. Beware of so-called analysis from anonymous members of the latest heroic profession.
If the first ten items are demonstrable misinterpretations, it doesn't bode well for the rest. I'd like to look at them too, but you get the disingenuous gist of it.
That's not to say I don't have some concerns.
As shrill and hysterical as these anti-reform nuts sound, the administration has given them something to hang their hat on when officials talk about things like end-of-life options... speaking somewhat briefly... with the sense that most people understand what they mean. But many people don't know what a DNR, a living-will, or a medical power of attorney is. They hear "end-of-life order" and believe the order is coming from someone else.
At that press conference on ABC a few weeks ago, there was the woman whose 100 year old mother lived to be 105 instead of accepting the initial doctor's recommendation that there was little hope. The daughter asked Obama if her mother's care would have been rejected under healthcare reform. Instead of saying Yes or No and Here's why... Obama started explaining the concept of pointless end of life care, leaving a very odd impression that this particular woman wouldn't have gotten the life-extending care.
Unless they REALLY mean the doctor and patient don't have a say, they REALLY need to make it clear that the best-practices guidelines they're talking about aren't written in cold, Vulcan stone.
In the context of pointless end-of-life options... on the subject of procedures that aren't going to benefit the patient as much as they offer dubious hope... reformers have spoken in somewhat short, curt terms about a delicate, nuanced, and frightening subject... giving the nuts, anti-reform lobbyists, and activists this opening.
Here are a few highlights of some problems with the healthcare bill.
These problems highlight the reason every bill must be read by the American people before they are signed. (if these points don't get you upset, please check your pulse and call 911):
Disclaimer: This summary was sent from a colleague. We encourage you to conduct additional research on your own.
Page 16: Eliminates the choice to purchase private health insurance!
Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!
Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!
Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)
Page 42: The "Health Choices Commissioner" will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.
Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.
Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.
Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.
Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans.
Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.
Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)
Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens
Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.
Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.
Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.
Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.
Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.
Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families.
Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll
Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll
Page 167: Any individual who doesnt' have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.
Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).
Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.
Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected."
Page 241: Doctors: no matter what speciality you have, you'll all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!)
Page 253: Government sets value of doctors' time, their professional judgment, etc.
Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries.
Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs.
Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!
Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.
Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.
Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited for owning and investing in healthcare companies!
Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.
Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.
Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc.
Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.
Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone).
Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia?
Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time.
Page 425: Goverment provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death.
Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends.
Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient's health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.
Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life.
Page 469: Community-based Home Medical Services.
Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations.
Page 489: Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage.
Page 494: Government will cover mental health services: defining, creating and rationing those services.
Talk to Your Family, Friends, Neighbors & Co-Workers
You must talk to people about this. We need to get as many people informed about this as possible. Here are a few key points:
This issue is not Republican vs. Democrat. It is government vs. individual rights.
"What's the proper role of Government in our lives?"
"Do we really want the government making decisions for us that should be between me and my doctor?"
"Should the government be eliminating personal health insurance plans?"
"Should the government be requiring seniors to attend 'end of life counseling'?"
We see the same RNC, GOP, the pantaloon goons marching in lock-step, mouthing 
"Realistically, 1 million signatures is an awful lot," Lowe said. It would be more realistic if between 250,000 and 500,000 signatures were collected by volunteers, with the rest coming from paid gatherers, he said."
